December 05, 2018

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez is visiting Miami-Dade on Friday to evaluate the county’s bid to host the 2020 national convention, a trip timed to coincide with Art Basel.

Former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, co-chair of the local host committee created to raise money for the convention, said the bidding team wants Perez to see Miami and Miami Beach at one of the busiest times of the year.

“He’s going to actually see the city function during a huge international week-long event,” said Levine, a Democrat who ran in Florida’s gubernatorial primary this year.

The committee hopes to show off the planning and coordination that has gone into hosting thousands of visitors during Art Week — including shuttling art enthusiasts on trolleys from Wynwood to South Beach and a joint policing effort across municipal boundaries. Proving that there is strong collaboration among multiple local governments is key, Levine said.

July 03, 2018

Miami-Dade has drawn an unlikely opponent to the county landing the 2020 Democratic National Convention. On Monday, the chairman of the county Democratic party urged national Democrats to look elsewhere unless Miami-Dade reverses a 2017 decision to comply with President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigration detentions.

Addressing national Democratic chairman Tom Perez on Twitter, Miami-Dade chair Juan Cuba wrote: "It's with great regret that I urge you to remove Miami from contention until they reverse their anti-immigrant policies of cooperating with ICE to deport our friends & neighbors."

Miami-Dade is one of three finalists bidding for the Democratic National Convention to be held July 13-16, 2020. If Miami-Dade wins, it would be the first time in nearly 50 years that the county will host a major political convention. Leaders from the county and the cities of Miami and Miami Beach made their pitch to the Democrats Friday in Washington D.C. Next, a committee of Democrats will visit the finalist cities and begin contract negotiations. The DNC plans to announce the 2020 host city in January.

The other two finalists for the 2020 Democratic convention — Houston and Milwaukee — also accept the federal detention requests at the heart of Miami-Dade's immigration controversy. But those jurisdictions had accepted the requests during the Obama administration, too, sparing them the national spotlight that came to Miami-Dade when it was the first major metro area to change policies after the 2016 presidential election.

Days after Trump took office, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez reversed a five-year policy of refusing detention requests from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The requests ask jails to extend detentions by 48 hours for people who are booked on unrelated local charges and are flagged on federal watch lists for alleged immigration offenders being sought for deportation.

November 06, 2017

The former Democratic National Committee chairwoman has spent the past five days tearing into Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s DNC leadership and organizational skills ahead of the release of her new book, “Hacks,” on Tuesday, one year after Donald Trump’s victory.

Brazile blasted the Weston Democrat’s choice to paint the walls of her DNC office tropical pink and a host of perks associated with the leadership role, like a Chevrolet Tahoe fully staffed with a personal entourage — including an assistant known as a “body woman” — according to an advance copy of Brazile’s book obtained by the Washington Post.

According to Brazile, the DNC was dependent on Hillary Clinton’s campaign cash for survival and Wasserman Schultz was more than willing to let the Clinton campaign pay most of the DNC’s debt in exchange for a measure of control within the party organization, which is supposed to remain an impartial umbrella organization for all Democratic presidential candidates.

Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination, repeatedly charged that the DNC under Wasserman Schultz was “rigged” in favor of Clinton.

“Debbie was not a good manager,” Brazile said in a book excerpt published by Politico. “She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party —she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn’t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was.”

Wasserman Schultz declined to address the specific criticisms levied by Brazile in an emailed statement.

“It was a tremendous honor to be asked by President Obama to serve as chair of the DNC,” Wasserman Schultz said. “I am proud of the work our team did to support Democrats up and down the ballot in the 2016 election and to re-elect the President in 2012. With Donald Trump in the White House, Democrats must stay focused on enacting a progressive agenda to protect our citizens, our values and our democracy and remain united towards our goal of electing Democratic congressional majorities in 2018.”

August 06, 2016

While prominent Democrats from Hillary Clinton on down regularly mock Donald Trump in public, he's not the only wealthy commercial real estate developer to be ridiculed by party operatives.

Stephen Bittel, a Miami Beach businessman who owns and operates more than $1 billion in real estate in South Florida and beyond, isn't the most popular fellow at the Democratic National Committee despite his large donations to the party.

A few of the DNC emails released last month by Wikileaks, which prompted the resignation of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz as chairwoman, contain trash-talking about Bittel among folks at top levels of its massive fundraising operation.

Bittel, who is co-chairman of the party's national finance committee, is cited in several emails looking ahead to a May 18 meeting of President Barack Obama with the Coconut Grove resident and a small group of other big donors at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington.

Two days before the event, DNC national finance director Jordan Kaplan and his Mid-Atlantic deputy Alexandra Shapiro were fretting about where to seat Bittel.

"Bittel said this morning he was coming so just plan on it, but he doesn't sit next to POTUS!" Kaplan told Shapiro.

POTUS is the Secret Service code name for President of the United States.

Shapiro quickly responded: "Yes -- Bittel will be sitting in the s-------t corner I can find."

The next day, in another email about seating for the elite fundraiser, Shapiro provided an update to Zach Allen, another DNC regional finance director.

Shapiro zeroed in on Bittel and Henry R. Munoz, a prominent San Antonio architect who is also co-chairman of the DNC national finance committee.

"So Henry and Bittel are both coming to the roundtable (with Obama) as punishment for something I did in a past life," she emailed Allen.

The two operatives mused about seating Bittel next to DNC finance vice chairman Chris Lowe and his wife, comedy writer Bonnie Datt.

"LOL, Chris and Bonnie think Bittel is a character," Allen told Shapiro. "So if you want to go that route, let me know so I can at least forewarn them but they'll be fine and if it makes your life easier, all the better."

In apparent reference to both Bittel and Munoz, Allen added: "I'm sorry you're having to deal with them."

Bittel, chairman of Terranova Corp., is a friend of Wasserman Schultz. He hosted a dinner for her at a Philadelphia restaurant during the Democratic National Convention shortly after she resigned as DNC head.

The Weston lawmaker quit the top Democratic post after some of the emails revealed disparaging comments by DNC aides about Sen. Bernie Sanders, who former Secretary of State Clinton bested to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

In a separate email exchange, Chadwick Rivard, a top DNC researcher, warned White House aide Bobby Schmuck about another donor with South Florida ties.

Coping the email to a half dozen other DNC operatives, Rivard sent Schmuck a long background description of Palm Beach billionaire George Lindemann Jr., board president of the Bass Museum in Miami Beach who was once an Olympic equestrian hopeful as a highly skilled horse rider.

The biography, part of which came from the Lexis-Nexis database, included Lindemann's 1995 conviction on three counts of wire fraud. That case resulted from a federal probe that found 50 horses had been killed over two decades in acts of insurance fraud.

Lindemann, who has donated to Republican and Democratic politicians, received a 33-month term in federal prison for his role in the scheme.

July 27, 2016

Hillary Clinton became the first woman to be chosen as a major party’s presidential nominee on the second day of the Democratic National Convention.

Her husband and former President Bill Clinton gave the night’s marquee address, taking the crowd on a trip down memory lane that started with how they met and ended with his case for why she would make a strong president.

"For this time Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunities and reduce the risk we take, and she is still the best darn change-maker I have ever known," Bill Clinton said. "You could drop her into any trouble spot, come back in a month, and some way, somehow, she will have made it better. That’s just who she is."

As Bernie Sanders supporters continued to protest Clinton’s win, Sanders made a motion to suspend the rules during the roll call vote and select Clinton as the nominee.

Before Bill Clinton took the stage, mothers of black Americans whose deaths sparked nationwide demonstrations said they supported Hillary Clinton after meeting with her to talk about their concerns about gun violence and criminal justice reforms. The "Mothers of the Movement" included the mothers of Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, among others.

"(Hillary Clinton) doesn’t build walls around her heart," said Lucia McBath, whose son, Jordan Davis, was killed in 2012 following a dispute over loud music. "Not only did she listen to our problems, she invited us to become a part of the solution, and that’s what we are going to do."

We fact-checked Clinton’s address, as well as other speakers from the night. (Here’s our rundown of the DNC’s first night.)

Hillary Clinton and health care

Bill Clinton bragged about his wife’s effort to tackle health care reform with a claim about expanding healthcare to children.

"In 1997, Congress passed the Children's Health Insurance Program, still an important part of President Obama's Affordable Care Act. It insures more than 8 million kids," Clinton said. "There are a lot of other things in that bill she got done, piece by piece, pushing that rock up the hill."

According to Medicaid, CHIP insures more than 8 million children. The late-Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., received much of the credit for CHIP, because he shepherded the legislation through a Republican-controlled Congress, and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch was the lead Republican cosponsor.

In 2007, Kennedy vouched for Clinton’s vital role in CHIP, saying, "The children's health program wouldn't be in existence today if we didn't have Hillary pushing for it from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue."

That notion was seconded by Nick Littlefield, a senior health adviser to Kennedy at the time.

Point being, Clinton did work behind the scenes to create the program to offer healthcare to children, but Bill tip-toes around the scope of his wife’s role. We rated this claim Mostly True.

Trump: I think she was disastrous. It turned out she was a disaster. I've been saying that for a long time. Not a good person and got caught and said a lot of bad things and it was very sad. And I think as far as the convention it's not played out yet. We are going to have to see what happens with Bernie Sanders. I think Bernie got very tired. He wants to go home. He wants to go to sleep. He wants to go to bed. He wants to get out. So it looks like he got tired and probably the people will sort of go home. I think we are going to get a lot of the Sanders people because of my views on trade because we are being so ripped off on trade and jobs. I think we are going to do very well with the Bernie Sanders people.

DeFede: Michelle Obama went after you on the first night without ever invoking your name. What did you think about a First Lady making a political speech like that?

Trump: I'm not that surprised. Look she did her thing and I thought it was fine. I thought her speech was ok. I thought it was pretty good. I really didn't pay much attention to it.

The Democratic National Convention kicked off Monday in Philadelphia, Pa., with boos and shouts from Bernie Sanders supporters disappointed in Hillary Clinton as the presumptive party nominee.

Saying "no one else is more disappointed than myself" in his second-place finish, Sanders used his primetime DNC address to emphasize unity behind the Democratic ticket and Clinton.

"By these measures, any objective observer will conclude – that based on her ideas and her leadership – Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States," Sanders said.

The convention opened after a contentious weekend following the release of nearly 20,000 emails showing party officials appearing to favor Clinton over Sanders, leading chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to announce she would resign after the convention.

Republican nominee Donald Trump got into the action from afar, tweeting that Sanders would have won the nomination had it not been for superdelegates (a False claim).

The night also heard speeches from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and First Lady Michelle Obama.

We took a look at what was said, and how it fared on the Truth-O-Meter.

July 25, 2016

More than 400 people attended a “thank you” event for U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz at Del Frisco's steakhouse in Philadelphia Mondayafternoon. The event had been planned two weeks ago by South Florida Democratic donors.

Wasserman Schultz made no mention of the WikiLeaks emails and instead gave a few minutes of upbeat comments.

“She came in to a round of applause and everyone chanting ‘Debbie, Debbie,’” said Alex Heckler, a Democratic donor and lawyer from Miami Beach one of the co-hosts. “She went from hug to hug to hug.”

She thanked her husband, children and friends and said she was proud of her work for the party and as a member of Congress. She didn’t mention her primary opponent Tim Canova by name, although she reminded the crowd that she faces reelection on Aug. 30.

“She said she looks forward getting reelected and helping Hillary Clinton,” said Mike Moskowitz, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and co-host.

Developer Stephen Bittel hosted the event, and Mitchell Berger, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer, was also a co-host.

May 27, 2016

Ahead of July's presidential nominating convention, national Democrats plan to hold four public meetings across the country -- including one in Florida -- to discuss the party's platform.

"I want all Democrats to have their voices heard in this process," U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, said in a statement. "We are the Party of substance, ideas and diversity. We expanded the platform process to provide greater opportunity for Democrats to express their views and we look forward to hearing different perspectives from across the nation."

The Florida gathering of the platform committee meeting will take place July 8 and 9 in Orlando. The other meetings will take place in June in Washington, Phoenix and St. Louis.

Wasserman Schultz criticized Sanders’ response as insufficiently critical of his supporters. He and his campaign manager, in turn, are escalating complaints that Wasserman Schultz has used the party machinery to help her friend Hillary Clinton. All this comes at the very moment Wasserman Schultz had hoped Democrats would start to unify and turn their attention to the Republicans and Donald Trump.